He’s trying to work out if he should explain what a Don uses the word ‘family’ to mean to Harky. The survivalist instincts in him suggest that this is really not the time to be correcting the angry troll. The toadying instincts are screaming that he ahould be helpful right now.

The oddest thing about this series… is that it’s so hard to cheer for the supposed ‘good’ side and their defence of such a bigoted and human-supremacist system. It’s easy to respect Harky from the things we see of him, he honestly cares for his people and wants better for them.

“Good” and “bad” are social constructs. “Good” is “us”. “Bad” is “them”. Nobody walks into a war thinking that they are the “bad guys”. They’re just the poor saps that are dying for their country. If you really look at it, every group in the World’s Rebellion has suffered under Gastonian expansion. That’s rather much the reason that they sounded the drums of war in the first place, to fight back against the colonial invaders that wish to strip the resources from their lands. Think, if you will, of the Empire from Star Wars. Sure, they were bigoted and human-centric. They repressed aliens. Did they do it for the sake of it? Sure. But the Emperor also had the motivation of trying to harden up the galaxy against an invading force that he KNEW was coming. Evil committed in the cause of the aggregate good and such. Doesn’t make it LESS evil, mind. Just that everyone has their own motivations, and doesn’t view themselves as “evil” or “bad”. The world’s just more gradient than that.

You have to remember though that the peaceful overture was at its best just another attempt to keep the status quo. A system where they have no voice, no real power except to be viewed as monsters to be killed, or to be pushed to the very outskirts of what can be called habitable land. One example being the Savassi, forced to live in the deserts where even dye is an unheard of luxury.

I love this webcomic simply for the fact that aside from its awesome story, it makes one think. And we get laughs…

“The oddest thing about this series… is that it’s so hard to cheer for the supposed ‘good’ side”
So hard ? No. I cheer for them anytime.

“and their defence of such a bigoted and human-supremacist system.”
No one ever said or even just suggested that the “Savage” races would do a better job at ruling the whole shebang and being nice with the other races. For all we know, they don’t even remotely look like democrats either.

“It’s easy to respect Harky from the things we see of him, he honestly cares for his people and wants better for them.”
Yeah, and he attempts to completely genocide another race. See what he did to the wood Elves. Was that called for ? No, it wasn’t. During that battle, Harky even had his drummer killing a fleeing librarian, a non-fighter. What a glorious act of resistance against oppression, really. Not to mention they also killed many female wood-elves. Once again, making no freaking difference between on-duty, armed soldiers and non-fighters.
And way before that, a team of three or four representatives of the Rebellion (I’ll call them that way) attacked a human port and would have summoned a huge kraken-like creature to complete the “job”, if the occasion they had to do so hadn’t been foiled in the nick of time by our heroes.
It wasn’t even a military port, just a civilian fishing one.
And again before that, Harky even had an entire (human or elvish, I can’t remember) village destroyed, Lidice style (or Oradour-sur-Glane stlye, for the French people out there).
Gravedust even tried to have the souls of the dead telling him who did it to them, and barely got the name “Harky” from the screeching ghosts.

Yes, they are overall less civilizated – it was quite fortunate that the dwarfs and the goblins were pushed to their side. But that doesn’t make them less willing to fight to defend themselves, and as such, they have to engage in assimetric warfare, thus crippling the enemy resources becomes the top priority, so yes, destroy the harbor. Destroy the positions where the enemy could get support and entrench. Steal the wood elves sacred branch and try to get a superweapon – because even if the wood elves could had become allies, they would be very reluctant and overall less usefull than having Tectonicus around.

Assymetric warfare ? You’re daft ? They had war machines and were more than enough in numbers to engage in conventionnal, head-on warfare.

“thus crippling the enemy resources becomes the top priority, so yes, destroy the harbor”
It’s a civilian harbor, still. They’re not even trying to sabotage or rigg a military dockyard to blow, they’re attacking a fleet of fishing boats.

Now, concerning the Woodies, you say “they could had become”. Is that grammatically correct ? I’m just asking. English isn’t my native language and some subtleties still escape me.

On the other hand, “an army of Savage Races destroys a Gastonian settlement, looting and burning all in their path and slaughtering those unable to flee” is a shocking development that shakes the nation to its core.

Meanwhile, “an army of Gastonians destroys a Savage settlement, looting and burning all in their path and slaughtering those unable to flee” is, by all indicators, a Tuesday.

Another key delineation of unarmed martial arts is the use of power and strength-based techniques (as found in boxing, kickboxing, karate, taekwondo and so on) vs. techniques that almost exclusively use the opponent’s own energy/balance against them (as in T’ai chi ch’uan, aikido, hapkido and aiki jiu jitsu and similar). Another way to view this division is to consider the differences between arts where Power and Speed are the main keys to success vs. arts that rely to a much greater extent on correct body-mechanics and the balance of the practitioners energy with that of the opponent.:..*”

Guilded Age does not claim ownership of any of the corporate branding that appears in this comic, nor does it claim any affiliation, partnership, or endorsement of any kind. They are used strictly as an artistic choice for the set dressing of the comic.